Academic Profile

Currently serving as Director of the English Department’s Honors Program, she is also director of BC’s new minor in Medical Humanities, Health, and Culture. Her recent writing focuses on genetic subjectivity and narrative. She is author of What We Have (Gotham Books, 2010), a memoir about her family’s experience with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, and editor of The Story Within, a collection of personal essays on genetics and identity forthcoming from Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (Fall, 2013). She is currently working on a study of genetics, narrative, and representation. In addition, Amy writes creative nonfiction on issues related to family and the writing life. She has published recent essays in Memoir (and), Michigan Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and Kenyon Review Online. Her publications on 17th century British literature include a book on utopias (Founding Fictions: Utopias in Early Modern England, University of Georgia Press, 1996) and articles on topics such as technologies of timekeeping; early modern museums; Milton and sunspots; Milton’s heaven as dystopia; and elegy, mourning and memory.